Steffen pulled open the castle gate, gently pushing his wife in front of him. "Ow!" she cried in indignation, "I am a princess, I don't deserve your abuse!"
Steffen sighed, "I was unaware that I had hurt you, but you need to become used to a rough hand as my wife. You are no longer a princess, you're only the wife of a minstrel and that is how things are going to stay."
He pulled her along to the road and upon reaching it, Renate asked, "Where is our coach? I cannot travel without a coach."
"Can you dance?"
"What!"
"I asked if you could dance. If so, the time would pass more quickly for you and someone might hire us for the night."
"Would you join me?" Steffen took a step back in shock. "I never dance without a partner," she quickly explained, "and seeing as we never shared a wedding dance such as I might have had, were you not a minstrel, I am asking you."
Taking a deep breath, he took her hand and began to sing, "Who will play a tune for dancing? Who will play the fiddle sweet? All the girls are shyly waiting, waiting with impatient feet. Fiddler, fiddler, come here soon and play us all a merry tune. La la lalalala la la la la la lalalalala la lalala." Renate started dancing with her husband. He was light on his feet, as though he had been dancing for years. She stared at him in awe, but he kept his eyes on the road, leading her in among the other pedestrians, who soon joined in the dance with a joy and a vigor that Renate had never seen before.
When the newlyweds broke off from the others, Renate soon discovered why. They had entered another kingdom, Thrushbeard's to be exact. "Oh dear," she said. Her husband looked over at her, "We are in the kingdom of a man who I was terrible to once. What will I do if I meet him?"
Steffen smiled his secret little smile again, "If you do, apologize and tell him that you are the wife of a minstrel, no one of importance." Renate frowned and the minstrel turned to face her directly, "I am not a rich man, but my life is full of beautiful things. You are one of them. Another is that I don't have to share my home with anyone who would ask why you are with me."
They entered the woods which bordered his lands and as Renate walked, she tried to focus on the way that the light came through the trees rather than the young man beside her. Further up the path came the sound of braying donkey and cursing. Taking a knife out of his belt, Steffen handed it as well as the lute to Renate and instructed her to hide in the hollow of a tree. Feverishly, he whispered to her, "This is your second test, passing it may help you live. If I'm not back in fifteen minutes, run home," pressing a kiss to her mouth, he ran to see what the difficulty was up ahead.
Renate tried to spit out the aftertaste of the kiss, which wasn't as terrible as she had expected. Rubbing the spit from off her mouth, she leaned back against the side of the tree that the minstrel had told her to enter. She was going to have to learn to call him something else; minstrel was too impersonal to call the man she had married.
Meanwhile, Steffen ran to see what the trouble was. What he found was surprisingly not a foe, but a friend. His servant Hans had misdirected a donkey, leading it so that its rope was taut around a tree. "Hans!" he cried in surprise.
The servant looked up in confusion, the man before him sounded like his king, but didn't look like him, "Who are you?" the man asked as Steffen approached with his arms spread wide in greeting.
"Is that anyway to treat your recently beardless king?"
"My lord!" Hans started to explain in depth what he was doing on the road, how the donkey was misled, events in the kingdom, and had soon taken over the full fifteen minutes warning that Steffen had given Renate. All of a sudden, a battle-cry sounded, coming towards the path and Hans was knocked over in a flurry of fists and limbs.
"What did you do to my husband?" cried the voice from the pale blur.
Steffen chuckled and the punching stopped, "I had no idea you would come back for someone you just met, your highness."
Renate looked up at her husband with wide eyes, not believing that he still stood, safe and sound. Brushing herself off, she said, "I don't leave anyone behind, even if I barely know them."
"Now that you know I didn't kill him, could you get off of me?" Hans choked out from under her knee to his throat. Renate stuck out her hand and her husband helped her off of the poor man. "Well, now that I can breathe again: would you like a ride into town?"